Ganesh Banerjee on the Malda court premises on Friday. Picture by Surajit Roy

Malda, Nov. 27: A district general secretary of the Malda Trinamul Congress was arrested today on charges of murdering Congress leader and former Englishbazar municipality vice-chairman Biswanath Guha.

Ganesh Banerjee, who left the Congress and joined Mamata Banerjee’s party along with 200 others three months ago, was picked up from his house in the Puratuli-Barmanpara area of the town at 3am today. Another accused, Shyamal Majumdar, fled his residence before police could reach.

Sources in Intuc, the labour wing of the Congress of which Guha was the district president, said a property dispute was probably the reason for the murder.

Banerjee has been remanded in police custody for seven days by chief judicial magistrate B.B. Mondol.

Guha was found bludgeoned to death on the night of July 12 last year in an under-construction lodge about 500 metres from his house. The police then arrested Akhtar Sheikh, Guha’s driver, and announced that he had admitted to the crime. Guha’s wife Lakshmi was interrogated twice.

“Ganesh Banerjee was the person who had filed an FIR with the Englishbazar police accusing Akhtar of committing the murder. He also recorded Shyamal Majumdar as a witness. Both of them were very close to the murdered person and we are looking for the absconder,” said Malda superintendent of police Bhuban Mondol.

Banerjee had said in his FIR that Majumdar was the first to call him up to convey the news of Guha’s murder.

According to the district police chief, there was more to be unearthed as more than one person involved in the grisly killing. Guha was found with his head bashed in, stabbed and with two bullet injuries, one on the head, the police recalled.

Investigating officer and deputy superintendent of police Shyam Singh described the case as “unique”. “This is a rare case where two persons, one who lodged the FIR and the other, who was the witness, both turned out to be involved directly with the murder. They had tried to pin the entire blame on the driver,” he said.

Akhtar had been taken to Bangalore in August 2008 for a polygraph test and narco-analysis where he had come clean before his interrogators. Investigators said the test reports had arrived in Malda recently and after that the police zeroed in on Banerjee and Majumdar.

While the district police chief was silent about the motive behind the murder, Intuc sources said Guha had bought properties in the names of Banerjee and Majumdar and the dispute could have led to the crime.

The police said Guha himself was no stranger to crime. In 1992, he had been sentenced to life term by a Malda court for the murder of a Congress supporter. After four years in jail he was acquitted by the high court. He was also implicated in a number of other murder cases, the police said.

Intuc supporters today held a demonstration in front of the police superintendent’s office, demanding the punishment of the guilty for their leader’s murder. “It is now more than one-and-a-half years since Biswanath Guha was murdered, we want all the guilty to be hanged,” said current Intuc district president, Kazi Nazrul Islam.

Banerjee is as a clerk in Chintamani Girls High School here. Majumdar, on the other hand, is a supplier of building material.

Asked about his reaction to Banerjee’s arrest, Malda Trinamul president Gautam Chakrabarty said the accused had joined the party recently. “If he is involved in the crime, the law should take its own course. The party will never stand by him,” Chakrabarty said.